Posts Tagged ‘smokey’

This is a true story about my dog Smokey from several years ago. Smokey has since passed on, but I still think of him from time to time. I was recently reminded of this lost and found story when empathizing with someone whose dog has been missing for over a month.

Smokey was everything a good dog should be. Smart, loyal, lovable, and well-mannered. He was my boy. He didn’t just love me, he took care of me. I can recall a number of incidences when he had my back, but before I relate the lost and found story, let me tell you about one of these incidents during our trip to the Grand Canyon.

I was separated from my husband at the time and was anxious to go out and see the world. I was really into hiking, rock climbing, and other outdoor activities at the time so the Grand Canyon seemed like a great place to go on vacation. As a single female, I should have been a little afraid to go on vacation by myself. But I really wasn’t going to go by myself. I was taking my boy Smokey with me.

This isn’t the Grand Canyon, but my dog Smokey was my hiking buddy on a lot of trips. We spent three days roughing it on a hike we made around Georgetown Lake in Texas.

Our first stop was in Tucson where we slept in my car at a campsite. We stayed only long enough to sleep and for me to take a quick photo of Smokey in front of a tall cactus. Then we were on our way to Sedona. I think we were there for a day or two hiking the wild green trails surrounding various big red rock formations. It was on that trip that Smokey and I saw our first Tarantula. Cool!

Before we headed to the Grand Canyon, we stopped in Tucson.

Next, we went to the Grand Canyon. It was here that Smokey first exhibited his role as my guardian. I was young and pretty back then so it is no surprise that I had men hit on me from time to time. For the most part, Smokey could care less. He got along with people well. But he had a sixth sense, as some dogs tend to do. There was this one particular man that Smokey did not like one bit. And he let the man know exactly how he felt, too. Smokey did not lunge at him or even bark, but when the man went to pet him Smokey showed his pearly whites and let out a menacing rumble. Now I don’t really know if this man was up to no good or not. But I trusted Smokey more than I trusted myself.

That’s my boy!

This is just a hint at how close Smokey and I were. So you can imagine how devastated I felt on the day he disappeared. Someone left the gate open and being an intact male, Smokey went out exploring.

I looked everywhere for him to no avail. I must have filled the tank in my car a dozen times while out looking for him. I even checked the animal shelter, but there was no sign of him anywhere. The internet was not as prevalent as it is now, so I did what most people who lost their pet did back then. I put up hundreds of fliers and posted ads in the newspaper. I also talked to people who were out and about and visited the shelter on a regular basis.

No one had claimed to see Smokey. Not a single person responded to my ad or my fliers. I did have a scam call where a truck driver told me he had my dog and he wanted money, but I didn’t fall for it. This man didn’t have my dog.

For two long weeks I feared for the worst. I was sure Smokey had been hit by a car or something. Smokey was smart but he was not streetwise.

By the beginning of week three, I was ready to give up. I almost didn’t place an ad in the paper. But thankfully, I did.

A couple of days after I placed that ad, I finally got the call I had been hoping for. It was a vet office. They said they had picked up a dog fitting Smokey’s description a couple of weeks ago. It was quite a distance from our house, but it really sounded like it could be my Smokey. He had the same collar. He had tags too, although the woman said the tag information didn’t lead her anywhere. (I checked the tags myself later and the tags did, indeed, come back to my current information. But that is another story.)

I still wasn’t sure if it was my Smokey that they had or not, but my heart raced as I got in my car and tried not to speed over to the vet office. When I got to the office, I tried to be patient as the receptionist called someone to the front. As a woman led me to the back kennel area, I asked her a dozen questions. My heart was still racing and she was walking so darned slow!

Smokey must have heard my voice because before we got to the door of the kennel area, I heard a wailing cry. I’ve never heard this sound from Smokey, but somehow I recognized his voice too. The woman couldn’t open the kennel area door fast enough!

She didn’t have to show me which cage Smokey was in. I just followed his cry. And sure enough, there was my boy!

I cried so hard at seeing him again. He cried too. It didn’t take long before the entire vet staff had tears in their eyes too.

When the woman opened the cage, I was mauled by the happiest dog ever. I’m sure he scratched me with his nails, but I didn’t care. I was so happy to see him again. I got my boy back! It was the best day ever!!!

You can’t end a story on a happier note than this, so The End.

This is my dog Smokey in his younger years. He is 2.5 years old in this photo, long before the lost and found incident.

This is part of the Caring for Critters Round Robin hosted by Jodi with Heart Like a Dog. Each day of the month, a different pet blogger shares their experience in dealing with a particular health issue. I am following Jen with Dogthusiast.com with various health issues that I’ve encountered with my dogs over the years.

It’s difficult to tell in this photo, but Cassie had a permanently dry nose due to her bout with distemper when she was young.

Cassie’s Distemper
Cassie got distemper when she was about two years old and I was eleven. The vet gave us some medicine and we kept her in the garage away from our other dogs. I went in to see her every day after school and even set up my own little chair so I could stay in there with her. (My mom wouldn’t let me sleep in there overnight, though.) The distemper caused Cassie to lose her leg muscles. My mother showed me how to help her get her strength back so Cassie could walk again. I don’t know how much of this my mother did when I was at school, but I worked with Cassie every chance I got. She eventually pulled through. The disease left her with a permanently dry nose and gooey eyes, but she lived as a normal happy dog to the age of thirteen.

Smokey loved to travel.

Smokey’s Blistered Feet
One day the gate didn’t close properly when my ex (then my husband) headed out in his truck. Smokey took off after him. It was at least a quarter mile, possibly more, before he noticed Smokey chasing him… and keeping up. He pulled over and Smokey slowed down to a painful limp. The hard fast run on pavement blistered Smokey’s feet very badly. There wasn’t much a vet could do other than clean his feet and give him some antibiotic ointment. So for the next few days I did my best to keep Smokey from having to walk, kept his feet clean, put medicine on, and put bandages on whenever I needed to take him out for potty. Smokey healed quickly.

Sheba is the Rottweiler mix pup on the right. When she was an even smaller pup, she had Parvo and her mange was much worse. Loving care enabled her to overcome both.

Sheba’s Parvo
Sheba was either dumped in front of my house or she found her way there on her own and decided to stay. I took her in only to find she had parvo and mange. My dogs had their vaccinations against parvo, but I still kept Sheba separated from them. Sheba was given medicines and special food until the vet gave her the clear on the parvo. She still had mange but it wasn’t contagious and so she became a permanent member of the family. A healthy diet eventually cleared up her mange.

Sephi developed hypothyroidism when she was about 6 or 7 years old.

Sephi’s Hypothyroidism
I’ve written about Sephi’s hypothyroidism before. The short version of the story is this – Sephi came up with a skin condition where red bald spots appeared on her stomach and a few other places. The vet gave her medicine and it didn’t work. The vet then sent me to a doggie dermatologist and he gave Sephi a more powerful medicine that ended up harming her liver. She spent the night at the vet with an iv and the liver problem cleared up, but the skin condition didn’t. I took her to a different vet and they suggested hypothyroidism. Sure enough, the test results were positive. Sephi was given a prescription that was very inexpensive compared to all the other medicines that she had been prescribed, and her skin cleared up within a week.

Pierson has canine epilepsy and suffers from a short seizure every few months or so.

Pierson’s Canine Epilepsy
Pierson had his first seizure on his first Gotcha Day, which I wrote about on this blog on January 12th, 2013. He’s had a few more since then, a total of 6 I think it is now, with no known cause. Luckily, these episodes are short and he recovers very quickly. The vet says they are not bad enough to require medication. Medication can have a lot of side effects, and some of those side effects won’t be noticeable to us because dogs are good at hiding their discomforts. Pierson’s most recent seizure was a few days ago at 4:00am on September 12th. It was short, as usual. And as usual, he was back to his silly-boy self within moments afterwards. There isn’t much I can do for him when he has these. I simply make sure there is nothing nearby for him to hit and comfort him until it is over.

I used the pet first aid kit from Kurgo for the first time when Maya was injured by another dog.

Maya’s Leg Wound
I recently wrote about Maya being attacked by a dog. That was on August first of this year. The attack left her with a gaping wound on her leg. Luckily, no arteries were hit. A quarter-sized chunk of skin was torn off, but there was very little blood. Maya was given oral antibiotics as well as topical. The first day she was in a lot of pain so I also got her some doggie aspirin from Petco. It helped. She was her normal energetic self the next day. I washed her wound twice a day every day for a couple of weeks and made her wear a cone so she couldn’t lick her wound. She still has a scar, but her wound has healed very nicely.

There are so many other situations to write about. Becky Anne was hit by a car once and lost her tail. She also jumped off a cliff once! Then there was Huckleberry who jumped out of our car window to chase some cows. Both survived without major injuries, thank goodness. Our pets sure do give us some experiences, both fun and difficult. I could certainly do without the drama, but I could never do without my dogs.

Learn about more pet health care experiences by checking out Peggy’s blog, The Writer’s Dog. Peggy’s topic is Caring for Super Seniors.

Did I say ‘wordless’? Okay, so it’s not completely wordless. Today is my 41st birthday. I do not dread this day (nor did I dread the big four-o day). These are the happiest times in my life. There have been a lot of bumps in my early years, but one great thing has been constant for all 41 of them and that is dogs. Let me share them with you.

I showed you a photo of this dog last week. Wendy wasn’t just special to my mom, she was special to me because she was the first dog I was ever exposed to.

My mom was worried about how Wendy would react to me as a newborn baby. Luckily, Wendy adored me and she was very protective of me. She would sleep under my crib and she’d watch me carefully whenever anyone held me.

I showed you this photo last week too. While I was growing up, my mom had a number of dogs, but Cassie was the first dog that was considered my dog.

When my mom took Cassie in, I was just 10 years old. Cassie immediately attached herself to me and would only sleep with me in my room, even when it was my sister’s turn to have her.

After I moved out of my parent’s house I, of course, took Cassie with me. Cassie was getting older and I thought a new puppy would liven things up a bit. Cassie wasn’t as thrilled about Smokey as I was, but they did play from time to time and Smokey did put a bit of a spring into her step.

My dog Smokey was my hiking buddy. We spent three days roughing it as we hiked around Georgetown Lake in Texas.

Here’s a better photo of my dog Smokey, also taken at Georgetown Lake.

Smokey and I did a lot of outdoor things together. Swimming was one of his favorites.

After a year or so of getting Smokey, I started working for the animal shelter in Austin, Texas. Since then I adopted and fostered a number of dogs (and cats). I don’t talk about them as much as the others because I had to leave them with my ex after we got divorced. The divorce ended badly so I do not know what became of them. I can only hope he cared for them or gave them to good homes.

Huckleberry Hound was rescued from the back of a Uhaul truck with 50 other dogs. The dogs were all sick with Parvo. Huckleberry was the only one that pulled through. He lived at the shelter for three months before I decided to take him home. Huck lived with me for four years before he got out of the fence one day and was struck and killed by a car. 😦

Huck with Scrapper and Grady. Scrapper is the cat and he loved to walk on a leash outside. Grady was my dad and stepmom’s dog. They gave up Grady because they couldn’t train him. They do not have the dog-sense that my mom has.

Patra (short for Cleopatra) is the tortoiseshell cat and is the first cat I rescued from the animal shelter. She was a stray and was in rabies observation for a week for scratching a child. She was going to be euthenized but I didn’t let it happen. I don’t remember how I got Scrapper, the white with gray kitty. And Dillan, the all gray kitten, was rescued from the jaws of a Doberman named Dillan.

I fostered Molly for a few weeks, during which time she earned the nickname of Molly McButter.

From left to top then bottom right: Skittles, Max, and Puddles. These were foster pups I had for a few weeks.

I honestly don’t remember how I got Spider (so named because he often climbed the curtains and walls). He is one of the ones I was forced to leave behind when I got divorced.

Becky Anne, the G. Shepherd-colored Whippet mix, was going to be put to sleep because she wasn’t cute enough. Yes, it’s true. The man in charge of the shelter I worked at decided he didn’t like me and immediately ordered the dog to be put to sleep when he found out I took interest in her. Sheba is the Rottweiler mixed that was abandoned in front of my house. I guess her owners decided that since I already had five dogs, I wouldn’t notice the sixth! I had Sheba for two years before she got out with Huckleberry and was never heard from again, even though she was wearing her tags. 😦

Achilles came from a box of pups that someone was giving away in front of Walmart. I had him for almost three years before he escaped from the yard and was never seen again. He had tags, but I lived in the country so anything could have happened. 😦

If you’ve been following this blog, then you remember this dog. Like my dog Achilles, Sephi was named from Greek mythology (short for Persephone). My ex gave Sephi to me because he felt guilty for cheating on me. Of course, I didn’t know this at the time. Sephi was the only dog I was able to keep from the divorce. I couldn’t keep the others because I wasn’t working and so my ex got to keep our house.

Sephi was my sole companion for many hears after my divorce. She passed away at the age of 11 in November 2011.

My two current best buds are Maya and Pierson.

Maya was adopted by a family with two toddlers and an infant. After one week, they posted her on Craigslist and I was the lucky responder. Pierson was rescued from Pierson Park in Kansas City, Kansas.

That’s all the words I have on this very special Wordy Wordless Wednesday. For more doggy fun, check out the blog hop link below.